Alibaba's Success Is Another Wake-Up Call From China To Americans.# Stock
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Business 9/21/2014 @ 9:38AM 1,843 views
Alibaba's Success Is Another Wake-Up Call From China To Americans. Hear It?
I grew up in New England, a part of the U.S. with relatively few connections
to China compared with, say, California. I’ve lived here in Shanghai for
almost the past dozen years, been in Asia even longer, and regularly try to
get one of my sisters back at home to visit China. Her clan by marriage
travels to other continents. “No thanks,” she says.
To be sure, there are plenty of reasons for Americans not to be enamored
with China. Many U.S. companies here believe China’s government doesn’t
treat them fairly, in a kind of modern mercantilism. The Communist Party
enforces censorship and restricts religion. And, in a less serious realm,
just talking to Chinese can be hard because they have names that don’t have
any comparable sounds in English. Trying saying “Ah, Xiaozhuang, how’ve
you been?” Good thing Jack Ma at Alibaba years ago had the foresight to
choose an English-language first name as easy to pronounce as Jack. His
first name in Chinese is Yun.
Friday’s Alibaba record IPO and pop in New York on Friday brought to mind
my sister because, the way I see it, it’s another wake-up call for
Americans to pay more attention to the country’s extraordinarily rapid rise
in the world and what it means for our own future. The list of things that
China now ranks No. 1 in globally is book-length. The China Internet boom
that propelled Ma to the top of our Forbes China Rich List on Friday is a
familiar but still important story because so many fortunes are being
created by it. By far, China has the world’s largest number of Internet
and mobile phone users. It has embraced a key driver of U.S. tech success –
venture capital. Some say homegrown mobile apps like WeChat are already
better than U.S. counterparts, and the country may eventually dominate much
of the mobile e-commerce landscape. Chinese born after 1990 have grown up
digital, embrace new technology readily, seek wealth, are relatively
independent thinking, and are China’s best-educated generation ever. What
’s the chance this demographically rising group is going to change the
business world in a huge way? Very big.
And plainly, for all of its problems, China’s economy still has plenty of
upside. It’s already the world’s second largest. Given its big domestic
market and savings, the country is capable of generating growth for a long
time to come. From London to Seattle, mainland Chinese are having a big
impact on real estate markets, and the country’s tourists are a new potent
force in global travel. China’s role in global tourism is likely only
heading one direction: only a small fraction of its population now even
travels abroad.
Alibaba’s record-breaking IPO also underscores another China trait of our
era: ambition. Jack Ma started out as a English teacher in an eastern
Chinese tourist city, Hangzhou, and scrappily built Alibaba into a company
whose value rivals America’s own tech giants. He thinks big, hustles,
enjoys theatrics of all sorts, and has chutzpah. He gets rapped for poor
corporate governance and seemingly overreaching acquisitions, but absorbs
the blows and just keeps running.
Ma’s determination to make a mark calls to mind China’s president, Xi
Jinping. Arriving on the scene after a long, quiet rise behind his bland
predecessor, Xi is shaking up the country with a widespread corruption
crackdown that spans the globe, too. He is pursuing an activist foreign
policy and shrugging off criticism of China’s territorial claims by
neighbors such as Japan and Vietnam. To this China watcher, his spirit in
the brutal political realm ultimately isn’t much different than Ma’s in
commerce, nor of the Chinese air forces pilot that recently buzzed at close
distance U.S. Air Force jet near China’s border that predictably brought a
somber rebuke from the Pentagon. Way to go, say many of my Chinese friends,
China’s on the way up!
The U.S., meanwhile, is stuck with two more years of ineffective leadership
under President Obama, a politician who has lost much of the public support
he once enjoyed. (Pick your own reason). His administration is doing a
notably poor job of helping ordinary Americans understand the importance of
the rise of China in the world in a meaningful way, of explaining the
opportunities and risks that come with it, or doing much to address either.
For starters, are enough U.S. public schools teaching Mandarin? When
history is written, recent U.S. involvement in Iraq may be seen as less
important than Washington’s handling of economic and other ties with China.
Think about it: One country is the world’s biggest debtor, runs a huge
trade deficit with the other that saps its growth, lacks strong national
leadership, and has been struggling to expand economically. The other is in
the opposite boat: China runs large trade surpluses vis-à-vis the U.S.,
likely has years of sustainable growth of growth ahead of it, has
politically focused leaders, and aims over the long haul to become the top
country in the world.
If you somehow haven’t yet given some thought about what that means for
your career, your company’s competitiveness and future opportunities, your
financial health and U.S. security, it’d probably be a good idea to do so.
You probably just don’t want to start out with trying to say “Ah,
Xiaozhuang, how’ve you been?”
–Follow me on Twitter @rflannerychina
Alibaba's Success Is Another Wake-Up Call From China To Americans. Hear It?
I grew up in New England, a part of the U.S. with relatively few connections
to China compared with, say, California. I’ve lived here in Shanghai for
almost the past dozen years, been in Asia even longer, and regularly try to
get one of my sisters back at home to visit China. Her clan by marriage
travels to other continents. “No thanks,” she says.
To be sure, there are plenty of reasons for Americans not to be enamored
with China. Many U.S. companies here believe China’s government doesn’t
treat them fairly, in a kind of modern mercantilism. The Communist Party
enforces censorship and restricts religion. And, in a less serious realm,
just talking to Chinese can be hard because they have names that don’t have
any comparable sounds in English. Trying saying “Ah, Xiaozhuang, how’ve
you been?” Good thing Jack Ma at Alibaba years ago had the foresight to
choose an English-language first name as easy to pronounce as Jack. His
first name in Chinese is Yun.
Friday’s Alibaba record IPO and pop in New York on Friday brought to mind
my sister because, the way I see it, it’s another wake-up call for
Americans to pay more attention to the country’s extraordinarily rapid rise
in the world and what it means for our own future. The list of things that
China now ranks No. 1 in globally is book-length. The China Internet boom
that propelled Ma to the top of our Forbes China Rich List on Friday is a
familiar but still important story because so many fortunes are being
created by it. By far, China has the world’s largest number of Internet
and mobile phone users. It has embraced a key driver of U.S. tech success –
venture capital. Some say homegrown mobile apps like WeChat are already
better than U.S. counterparts, and the country may eventually dominate much
of the mobile e-commerce landscape. Chinese born after 1990 have grown up
digital, embrace new technology readily, seek wealth, are relatively
independent thinking, and are China’s best-educated generation ever. What
’s the chance this demographically rising group is going to change the
business world in a huge way? Very big.
And plainly, for all of its problems, China’s economy still has plenty of
upside. It’s already the world’s second largest. Given its big domestic
market and savings, the country is capable of generating growth for a long
time to come. From London to Seattle, mainland Chinese are having a big
impact on real estate markets, and the country’s tourists are a new potent
force in global travel. China’s role in global tourism is likely only
heading one direction: only a small fraction of its population now even
travels abroad.
Alibaba’s record-breaking IPO also underscores another China trait of our
era: ambition. Jack Ma started out as a English teacher in an eastern
Chinese tourist city, Hangzhou, and scrappily built Alibaba into a company
whose value rivals America’s own tech giants. He thinks big, hustles,
enjoys theatrics of all sorts, and has chutzpah. He gets rapped for poor
corporate governance and seemingly overreaching acquisitions, but absorbs
the blows and just keeps running.
Ma’s determination to make a mark calls to mind China’s president, Xi
Jinping. Arriving on the scene after a long, quiet rise behind his bland
predecessor, Xi is shaking up the country with a widespread corruption
crackdown that spans the globe, too. He is pursuing an activist foreign
policy and shrugging off criticism of China’s territorial claims by
neighbors such as Japan and Vietnam. To this China watcher, his spirit in
the brutal political realm ultimately isn’t much different than Ma’s in
commerce, nor of the Chinese air forces pilot that recently buzzed at close
distance U.S. Air Force jet near China’s border that predictably brought a
somber rebuke from the Pentagon. Way to go, say many of my Chinese friends,
China’s on the way up!
The U.S., meanwhile, is stuck with two more years of ineffective leadership
under President Obama, a politician who has lost much of the public support
he once enjoyed. (Pick your own reason). His administration is doing a
notably poor job of helping ordinary Americans understand the importance of
the rise of China in the world in a meaningful way, of explaining the
opportunities and risks that come with it, or doing much to address either.
For starters, are enough U.S. public schools teaching Mandarin? When
history is written, recent U.S. involvement in Iraq may be seen as less
important than Washington’s handling of economic and other ties with China.
Think about it: One country is the world’s biggest debtor, runs a huge
trade deficit with the other that saps its growth, lacks strong national
leadership, and has been struggling to expand economically. The other is in
the opposite boat: China runs large trade surpluses vis-à-vis the U.S.,
likely has years of sustainable growth of growth ahead of it, has
politically focused leaders, and aims over the long haul to become the top
country in the world.
If you somehow haven’t yet given some thought about what that means for
your career, your company’s competitiveness and future opportunities, your
financial health and U.S. security, it’d probably be a good idea to do so.
You probably just don’t want to start out with trying to say “Ah,
Xiaozhuang, how’ve you been?”
–Follow me on Twitter @rflannerychina